using unix pages

We have some UsingUnix pages for students new to unix. If this is your first CS course at Swarthmore, those pages are meant to help you understand our setup.

Here’s a table of some basic Unix commands:

Command	Examples	Description
`ls`	`ls`	list files and directories
`ls`	`ls -al`	list all files, long output format
`pwd`	`pwd`	print working directory (where you are)
`cd`	`cd directory`	change directory
`cp`	`cp file newname`	copy a file to a new name
`mv`	`mv file newname`	move/rename a file
`mv`	`mv file directory`	move file to a directory
`less`	`less filename`	view file one page at a time (q to quit)
`mkdir`	`mkdir newdir`	make a new directory

And here’s an example of using some of the above commands, with typical outputs (username is csmajor1). Note the dollar sign is the unix shell prompt (your prompt may look a little different), and anything after the dollar sign is what the user is typing.

$ ls
Desktop/    Documents/  cs21/
$ pwd
/home/csmajor1
$ cd cs21/labs/00
$ pwd
/home/csmajor1/cs21/labs/00
$ ls -l
total 12
-rw------- 1 csmajor1 users  303 Jan 23 12:22 QUESTIONS-00.txt
-rw------- 1 csmajor1 users  513 Jan 23 12:22 bio.txt
-rw------- 1 csmajor1 users 1766 Jan 23 12:22 fixme-gb.txt
$ cp bio.txt newbio.txt
$ ls
QUESTIONS-00.txt  bio.txt  fixme-gb.txt  newbio.txt
$ mv newbio.txt mybio.txt
$ ls
QUESTIONS-00.txt  bio.txt  fixme-gb.txt  mybio.txt
$ rm mybio.txt 
rm: remove regular file 'mybio.txt'? y
$ ls
QUESTIONS-00.txt  bio.txt  fixme-gb.txt

In the above example the user:

lists their files with ls
prints their working directory with pwd
changes directories with cd to their cs21/labs/00 folder
lists their files using the long format option (ls -l)
prints their working directory again
copies a file (bio.txt) to a new name (newbio.txt)
lists their files again (note the newbio.txt file now)
moves the newbio.txt file to a new name (mybio.txt)
lists their files again
now removes their mybio.txt file
and finally, lists their files one more time

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